The skills crisis may not be all too bad for budding IT professionals if our universities take an approach that betters their business know how.
Economic influences are having an increasing impact on the structure and form of Australia's universities. Funding cutbacks are now a regular feature of the higher education landscape, forcing these institutions to look at new ways to fund education and research programs.
To deal with the funding shortfall, universities have taken a bilateral approach -- increasing their income through industry collaboration and full-fee-paying overseas students. IT education has been a natural target for both these trends.
With IT fuelling much of the productivity gains of the last two decades, the skills with which new students graduate is of paramount importance to industry, creating a mutual desire to increase university/industry collaboration. At the same time, long-term employment growth in the IT industry has led to a huge increase in the number of overseas students willing to pay full fees.
Do these opportunities for Australian universities create pressure for these institutions to accommodate the needs of new interest groups, even when they are in conflict with the traditional values of university education? Are universities becoming training instead of educational institutions? And does this influence result in students that may appear to be better suited to industry needs in the short term, but perhaps less able to respond to needs as technologies change?
Associate Professor Simeon Simoff of the University of Technology, Sydney, believes we need to start looking at IT education from a different perspective.
"The emphasis has moved from developing better computers, to using computers more effectively," Simoff observes. "Companies are looking for more than just programmers." Simoff's view is that students need to understand that IT is a service discipline, so they can use technology creatively to help companies gain competitive advantage. To do this, universities need to create students with a mix of talents from the theoretical fundamentals to knowledge of specific toolsets and languages.
Dr Steven Spencer, a research scientist at the CSIRO, provides honours students with experience in industrial projects. Research potential based on a solid theoretical grounding is essential but these students are also expected to have effective skills in the tools of the trade. In fact, when recruiting new talent, companies increasingly expect proven experience in very specific technologies, even for graduate positions. This is driving universities to make their courses vocationally oriented; as one of the measures of success for a university is the rate at which new graduates find employment.
Yet the skills that make graduates attractive today may quickly dissolve as more IT functions are commoditised and sent offshore. Tomorrow's job opportunities will require the ability to work at strategic levels that synthesise IT and business. As I recently heard one IT executive remark: "Today's programmer is tomorrow's typist."
While most academics will agree it is the role of a university to educate, not train, the pressures to cater to vocational needs are likely to increase. Ultimately, what matters most is that future graduates are able to succeed and prosper in a world of increasingly rapid technological change. Only a broad, multi-faceted approach to education will prepare them for this.
Are you concerned that universities are turning into training institutions? What should an IT degree prepare graduates for? Send feedback to tandb@zdnet.com.au.
Gerald Khoury lectures in IT at UTS and is managing director of Mackerel Sky, a company that provides independent consulting in enterprise systems management and architecture. He can be contacted at gerald@mackerelsky.com.au.
This article was first published in Technology & Business magazine.
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